Lawyer Chris Murphy awarded $110,000 after being defamed in ‘intrusive’ News Corp story

Criminal defence lawyer Chris Murphy has been awarded $110,000 after the federal court found he had been defamed by a “gossipy and intrusive piece” in the Daily Telegraph.

In an article chiefly about the breakdown of his marriage, gossip writer Annette Sharp wrote that the 72-year-old “continues to battle with the ravages of age and with it the associated deafness that has kept him from representing his clients in court during the past year”.

Justice Michael Lee said the article implied that Murphy’s role as a criminal lawyer – representing his clients in court like the lawyers in TV shows such as Law and Order, Rumpole of the Bailey and Perry Mason – was made impossible by his age and hearing loss.

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“To convey that a leading criminal solicitor was incapable of representing his client’s interests in court by reason of the ravages of age and associated deafness is an imputation of some seriousness,” Lee said on Monday. “It reflected upon an important part of Mr Murphy’s professional life in an inaccurate and misleading way.”

Lee said the Sharp article was defamatory of Murphy as a professional and rejected the Daily Telegraph’s defence of truth. He accepted evidence that Murphy had a good reputation as criminal defence solicitor for celebrity clients and characterised him as a truthful albeit difficult witness with a “rakish charm”.

The court heard from an audiologist that Murphy had a severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss in both ears and the hearing loss was permanent, but there had been no significant change to his hearing levels since 2012.

“The notion that Mr Murphy could appear and represent clients in court provided he obtained the assistance of hearing aids and Roger devices is one I find persuasive,” Lee said.

“In this regard, the fact that Mr Murphy wears his hearing aids was again not really disputed.”

Murphy said the reason he did not appear in court had nothing to do with his age or his hearing loss but the fact that he worked mainly behind the scenes for his clients.

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Lee said Murphy was not the only person to appear in court who needed hearing aids. “To suggest persons with hearing difficulties are unable to appear is a little like saying that someone with infirmity of sight is unable to appear,” Lee said.

“There have also been famous blind barristers and judges. Sir John Wall was a notable deputy master of the chancery division of the high court of justice in the 1990s. John Mortimer QC, in his play A Voyage Round My Father, memorably describes his father, a barrister, continuing to practise after he went blind.”

After legal proceedings commenced, the article remained online but the offending paragraph was amended to: “Murphy, who will be 72 this month, continues to manage matters for his firm’s famous clients, but hasn’t been seen to represent them in court as much in recent times.”

Murphy gave evidence that the article “hit an emotional vulnerability in an area where I could not conceive of such a blow occurring. It has caused me continuing sleeplessness and stress and still does. I had always thought my childhood inoculated me to endure the behaviour of others but for once I apply the word ‘traumatised’ to the impact this article had.”

Lee said he believed the article had been hurtful to Murphy but he thought the “extent of his subjective hurt was a tad exaggerated”.

“The article did not suggest Mr Murphy was incompetent (in the sense of being negligent or lacking professional skill); nor did it suggest any character flaw or moral turpitude,” Lee wrote in his judgement.

“But notwithstanding this, it is a far from trivial thing to convey about a person such as Mr Murphy.”

Lee said Murphy appeared to ignore the advice he had doubtless given to his own clients about how to behave in the witness box but found him to be truthful.

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“He was often non responsive, long-winded, argumentative and, once or twice, somewhat rude to the cross-examiner,” Lee said.

“Despite this, there was a certain rakish charm about his performance in the witness box and, despite my misgivings about his manner of giving evidence, he generally told the truth and the most important aspects of his evidence were corroborated or coincided with the inherent probabilities.”

In February Lee also found for the applicant in another high-profile case, ordering the publisher of the Australian Financial Review and columnist Joe Aston to pay legal costs of more than $1m for venture capitalist Dr Elaine Stead.